On 3 June 2012, away to Bella Vista, an eighteen-year-old centre-back made his debut in the Uruguayan Primera División for Danubio and was sent off in a 2-1 defeat. His name was Emiliano Daniel Velázquez Maldonado, born in Montevideo on 30 April 1994 and nicknamed “Indio”. Two years after that start, Atlético Madrid signed him, launching a career at the heart of defence that took him through Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico before he returned to Uruguay.
Youth career at Danubio
Velázquez began in children’s football at Institución Atlética Potencia, in the Montevideo district of Piedras Blancas, and joined Danubio’s academy at under-14 level. After that rough debut in 2012 he became a regular in the centre of the first-team defence. With Danubio he won the 2013 Torneo Apertura and the 2013-14 Uruguayan championship, the league title that closed his first spell at the club. In all he made 59 appearances and scored 2 goals for Danubio before crossing the Atlantic.
Move to Spain with Getafe
In August 2014 Atlético Madrid agreed a transfer with Danubio and handed him a five-year contract, but he never played a competitive game for the Madrid club. The day after joining he was loaned to Getafe, where he made his La Liga debut at the end of September 2014. On 21 December that year he scored the equaliser in a 1-1 draw away to Granada. The loan was extended into 2015-16, the season Getafe were relegated to the Spanish second division. Across his two campaigns at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez he played more than forty matches and scored four goals.
Braga and Rayo Vallecano
In August 2016 Atlético loaned him to Sporting de Braga in the Portuguese top flight, where he made 11 appearances and scored twice. A year later he joined Rayo Vallecano, then in the Spanish second division, on another loan. That 2017-18 season ended with Rayo crowned second-division champions and promoted to La Liga. In July 2018 the Vallecas club signed him permanently on a three-year deal. A knee injury suffered in the summer of 2019 kept him out for much of the 2019-20 campaign, played in the second tier. Counting both the loan and the permanent spell, he made 76 appearances and scored 2 goals for Rayo before leaving in August 2021.
Uruguay national team
Velázquez came through every Uruguay youth level. With the under-17s he finished runner-up at the 2011 South American Championship in Ecuador and, later that year, captained the side that reached the final of the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Mexico. With the under-20s he finished third at the 2013 South American Championship in Argentina and played at the U-20 World Cup in Turkey, where Uruguay lost the final to France on penalties. Óscar Tabárez first called him up to the senior squad in September 2013, without giving him minutes. His senior debut came on 10 October 2014 in Jeddah, as a starter in a 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia. It remained his only senior cap; he was called up again in November 2018 for friendlies against Brazil and France but did not play.
Santos, Juárez, Nacional and a return to Danubio
At the end of August 2021 he signed for Brazilian club Santos, playing 27 matches before his contract was terminated in July 2022. That same month he moved to Mexico to join FC Juárez in Liga MX, where he made 9 appearances. In September 2023 he returned home to join Nacional, with whom he won the 2024 Torneo Intermedio, settled in a final against Peñarol at the Estadio Centenario. In January 2025 he went back to Danubio, the club where he had come through the ranks and made his debut in 2012.
DanubioDefenderMarket value €528.0K